SaintBobby

I'm CEO of a Westminster think tank. Love it. And wld probably only quit for a job at Saints.

Big fan of his. But I think the thing we lack most in the team - and up front in particular - is real pace. AOC is the exception to this, but hardly certain to stay. I want a real fast striker to pair with Lambert.

I'm keen for us to make a big signing asap, as well. But, I also think it's a dangerous path to make a signing to "send a message" or "show intent"

All footballers can easily be split into two categories: 1. Those who wish to play for Southampton 2. Those who do not wish to play for Southampton It's that simple. The world revolves round us and until every footballer on the planet relaises this, well, more fool them.

I'll probably pre-order sight unseen. I'm on holiday for three weeks, leaving at 2pm on afternoon of 21st, so hope Royal Mail can get it to me before then. If the kit is so awful I'd never wear it, then I've wasted £50. If it's okay or better, I can wear it with pride in the USA.

Seems the club has abandoned the strategy of only announcing deals when they are 100% done and dusted, which I'm happy with. However, I thought the issue on Cork was wage demands not the transfer fee, so here's hoping that we can still complete the transfer.

He was 80% fit for much of last season. And still damned good. 20 goals and 15 assists in the NPC, I reckon.

Can we make Duckhunter our MC please? Let's pay him more than the present bloke and get him to promise to do nothing. Not only would he earn some extra cash on a Saturday at SMS but the football experience would be much better for all of us. He gets a £50 bonus every time he doesn't play a jingle after a goal as well. Do we have a deal?

This is just to let you know why I won't be able to read or contribute to this thread again, thanks to the mrs. She asked "what the hell is this about?" (thankfully I was only on the Saints Forum as she looked over my shoulder....) Me: "It's a thread about transfer speculation" Her: "What's that when it's at home?" Me: "Ok, can you work out what it means? Here's a quiz for you...what does HCDAJFU stand for?" Her: "I have no f***ing idea" Me: "Try and work it out, then..." >> Her: "Is it.........How Could Davis And Jaidi F*ck Up?"

Good luck to him. But tbh, I'd forgotten about him already. He did okay for us - but doubt he was on the "must have" or even "might like to have" list.

Yes

Totally agree. I mean what to people want to do with it before Aug 7th? Stroke it? Frame it? Lick it? I guess the only issue is whether marketing earlier/better wld get more total sales. But I whinged about this last year and NC et al proved me totally wrong.

This is the essential point for me. Lack of competition. Not blaming any folk for this, loads of folk put time and effort into running things like SWF so schmucks like me can gas off. But we probably need an ebb and flow. Some fora rising. Some falling. Some dying. Some being born. Maybe the fanbase isn't big enough to support that? Or maybe new tech will change things anyway (I remember the days of being on an email list!)

I have 3 season tickets in Kingsland and want to move our seats. This may involve moving to the seat that your stepdaughter/mate/lover/accountant/lawyer/PR agent/wife would like to have if I didn't move there. However, you can be totally confident that the ticket office will enable STHs to sit together. This may mean you have to move from your preffered, say, row F to a slightly worse row J, but it can be done np.

What's interesting is that lots of us seem to think expectations are too high. But when you ask people what their expectations actually are, all those not taking the p i s s seem to agree that somewhere around 8th-14th would be prefectly ok.

Yep. They probably are all running at a loss. It might be a "worthwhile" loss. A bit licket "quids for a kid" nights - which aren't revenue maximising but may have preceived long-term potential. Otehr issues will be how easy/hard is it to get into home games and how broad the season ticket base is (Saints is very broad - with about 505 or more of our home attednance being season ticket holders).

Didier Drogba Tragic after the event.....with AFAIK no rumour beforehand...?

I'd say CMS. Have only seen him play 6 or 7 games, but he looks a cut above. also, think he's the least likely to sign for us unfortunately.

I doubt the release of the shirt in July, as opposed to, say, May, makes much difference to overall sales. There may be a tiny handful of people who would only buy the shirt in June and refuse to do so afterwards. These might, I suppose, be offset by a few people who find the build up such an amazing turn on that they can't resist an impulse purchase on 20th July but would otherwise not have bought the shirt. I'd imagine there may be a more prosaic explanation than accounting/fair play rules. For example (just speculative), do the kit designers/producers charge less if they don't have to deliver early - e.g. is there a bottleneck in knocking out shirts in May/June? Or is there any case that you might only want to give a design spec when you know what division you're in?

Well, I've worked for organisations that run membership schemes for about 16 years. The administartive costs - even when organised highly efficient - are high. You need to factor in staff time and overheads too. The actual cost to a company of sending a letter is nearly always more than a pound. Most membership organisations with many more than 1K members will have a full time staff member working largely on the membership database. In Saints' case, you'd also need to make the job of the ticket sales staff a tad more complicated. And you'd need to put in procedures to prevent fraud (casual fans buying a ticket on a mate's membership account to swell his loyalty points). You'd also need some procedure to resolve disputes (a member complaining that he'd definitely only used his discount rights seven times and the database was wrong). You can assume the real cost of staff time is £10 per hour for even a minimum wage worker. £20+ for moderately more qualified staff. I don't know how many years of experience you have running membership systems. But if you can point to any membership organisation in the UK that runs at less than £5 a member (discounting those run on a purely voluntary basis, where the human resource cost is zero), I'd be delighetd to hear about it. Party political memberships costs anywhere from £10-£20 a year to administer, for example.

Even if you want to add that in, you just need a database, not a membership scheme. We have that anyway (although I don't know how robust it is - but it is used for some games to stop members of the general public/opposition fans from buying tickets)

It wouldn't even wash its own face. It would raise nowhere near 25OK. It would be expensive to administer and you need to factor in opportunity costs. For example, some cuurent purchasers of season tickets might downgrade to mere membership and end up attending less games and handing over less money as a result. The scheme being proposed was for a 50 fee attached to a 40 discount. The club only clears a tenner per member. The admin costs are likely to be higher than this - but even if you assume that the cost would only be £5 per person to administer, you would need to sign up 50,000 members to make your suggested 250K profit. That simply isn't going to happen. There are, in practice, only a small number of fans a membership scheme would appeal to. A very high proportion of hardcore fans are already season ticket holders. Those who aren't are almost all able to get to all the games they want to go without the slightest problem (generally only home games). Those who are hardcore, but not season ticket holders, can often join a group like the London Saints Supporters Club who can help with tickets. So, those who are likely to see any real benefit in a membership scheme are nowhere near 50,000. Not 10,000. Possibly not even 1,000. And at this point, the income from a membership scheme probably doesn't even cover the administrative set-up costs, let alone the on running servicing costs. The 250K figure is just a fantasy number you've plucked out of the air. Running a scheme would cost the club money in the NPC.

It's a message board. Not a pub. Hope this helps. And I have no problem ending thoughts with saying "that'll do, it's good enough, that's okay". I don't know what pubs you go to where these words elicit extreme violence from anyone listening to them. Sounds pretty retarded to me. Your system isn't "fair"...STHs should get priority, even if they have attended one or two less away games. As I've said, your system is unnecessary anyway. Any sufficiently devoted fan will make it into any game they want, with possible excpetion of Pompey away. It's just not worth setting up a whole system to deal with one of the 46 league games.

I wouldn't back us at 5/1 to go up. I'd sat we're about a 10/1 shot. So I think the odds are mean. 5/1 on Portsmouth goign down is an excleent bet though. I'll have some of that.If they ceased ro trade, I think you'd bet your money back. If they went down becaue of a points deduction, you'd win your bet.

I said it DIDN'T upset me...just that it was a waste of money. And I outlined why I believed this to be the case.